Bruce Marshall 207 Feature

Welcome to the Human Race

I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my originals performed at a private show with the Toy Caldwell Band, this was in Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1990. Many of Toy’s fans feel this should have been a live release for TCB and was the strongest live show during the post Marshall Tucker era, the band was really locked in and Toy played like a man possessed. There’s some video footage floating around with a song or two from this event…Toy Caldwell on guitar and vocals, Pic Pickens on guitar, Tony Heatherly on bass, Mark Burell on drums and I played keyboards, guitar and sang lead.

Shortly after I joined the TCB in 1989, I wrote what I felt was my best ballad up to that point, “Human Race”. I wrote it with Toy Caldwell in mind and hoped he might like it enough to record it. When he told me he wanted to include it on his debut solo album (later re-titled Son of the South) I was quite humbled and appreciated he felt that strongly about it. In hindsight, when I look back at the journey this song took me on…

Toy booked studio time for the 5 piece band at Paul Hornsby’s Muscadine Studios in Macon Georgia fall of ‘89 to do a 4 song demo session. Paul was the keyboard player in Hourglass with Duane and Gregg Allman and produced all the gold and Platinum Records for the Marshall Tucker Band during Toy’s tenure. We got some strong tracks and “Human Race” was one of the four tunes we did. With the help of this demo the band later got signed to Cabin Fever Records.

We hit the road for most of ’89 and ’90 and that summer booked studio time at 5 Alarm Studio’s in Memphis to start recording the new record. “Human Race” had made the cut and I was flown down for 3 days to do that one and a couple more vocals and guitar parts. Gregg Allman appeared on it as did Willy Nelson. As luck would have it, in the end my song didn’t get on the record for a myriad of reasons (a story for another day) and I started the Bruce Marshall Group later that year.

I was thankful I was able to buy the rights to the original demo with Toy so “Human Race” is included on my 2nd CD, Bruce Marshall Group, “Love of the Ride” on ATM Records. Let’s send this out to Toy and Tony who are no longer with us, thanks for the memories. I want to thank the folks who posted this, nicely done!